92 Years Later: Two Longtime Voices on Why the Black Press Still Matters
Editor Jasmine McBride talks with Senior Editor Jerry Freeman and sports columnist Charles Hallman as MSR marks 92 years since Cecil Newman founded the paper. Freeman, who joined in 1998, recalls late nights proofing pages before rushing them to a printer in Shakopee. Hallman, who has spent more than 50 years in the Black Press without ever writing for a mainstream outlet, describes himself as "a documentary of history," archived by the Library of Congress and Minnesota Historical Society, and argues the Black Press remains essential because it covers the full range of Black community life that mainstream outlets overlook.
This year marks 92 years since Cecil Newman founded what would become the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, and the paper’s staying power says something about the community it has always served.
Senior Editor Jerry Freeman, who has spent nearly 30 years with the paper, first walked into its old office at 38th Street and Fourth Avenue South in the summer of 1998 looking for volunteer proofreading work. Cecil Newman had died two years earlier, but his widow, Launa Newman, was still publisher, working alongside co-publishers Wallace “Jack” Jackman and his sister Norma.
Freeman remembers Tuesday nights spent proofing pages of classified ads, once a major source of revenue for the paper, before rushing finished pages to a printer in Shakopee, sometimes well past midnight. “The paper never missed an issue, not then, not in the preceding 60 years and not in the 30 years since,” he wrote in a reflection published last year. He watched the paper move from lead typesetting and IBM Selectrics to computers, scanners and email, and credits its survival to the people who kept it running through every change: editors, reporters, columnists, photographers and what he called “secret sources and late-night informants.”
Sports columnist Charles Hallman has an even longer view. He has written for the Black Press for more than 50 years, starting in Detroit and later at KMOJ and the Spokesman-Recorder, and he is quick to point out what sets it apart. “We’re not a monolithic community,” Hallman said. “You need to find all the different voices. One person does not speak for us.”
That conviction has shaped how Hallman approaches his beat. He said he never wanted to write only about wins and losses. What draws him instead are the stories underneath the games, like meeting Hank Aaron’s widow, Billye, for the first time this month at the NABJ Convention in Atlanta, or sitting down with Olympic hurdler Edwin Moses the same week. “I feel I’m a documentary of history,” Hallman said, noting that copies of the paper are archived by the Library of Congress and the Minnesota Historical Society. “Fifty years from now, somebody could read my article and learn something about society that they couldn’t learn on a phone.”
Hallman said that documentary role is exactly what separates Black-owned papers from mainstream outlets, which he said too often parachute into Black communities only when something goes wrong. “Do they ever document what we do overall?” he said. “We have layers to our community. Some are good, some are bad. But the Black Press tries to highlight all of that.”
He has since been inducted into a journalism Hall of Fame, a distinction he said he never expected. He believes he remains the only inductee to have spent his entire career at Black-owned papers rather than eventually moving to mainstream outlets. “I’ve never been laid off from writing for the Black Press,” he said, contrasting his tenure with layoffs that have recently hit sportswriters at mainstream outlets. He still mentors young journalists, telling one college student this year to build a body of work now, whatever it takes, rather than wait for a byline to make him known.
Both men see the current moment as a reason the Black Press still matters. Hallman pointed to efforts to weaken Title IX protections and to the small number of Black owners across professional sports leagues as issues he believes mainstream coverage glosses over. Freeman described the country as facing what he called the greatest threats to Black civil rights in his lifetime, and said he sees the paper positioned to speak hard truths to power as a result.
Publisher and CEO Tracey Williams-Dillard, who took over the paper from her grandmother, has carried that mission forward, staying true to what Freeman called the spirit its founder intended. Under the current digital-first transition and Gen Z editorial leadership, the paper carries that work into its 93rd year in new fashion.
For Freeman and Hallman alike, the anniversary is less about the number than the people who made it possible: publishers who refused to sell, reporters who refused to soften the truth and readers who kept showing up. “I give thanks,” Freeman wrote, “for the privilege of having made your acquaintance.”
Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.